International concern over fires in the Amazon mounted on Thursday, with the UN and French President Emmanuel Macron calling for action as Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research reported nearly 2,500 new fires in the past 48 hours.
Plastic pollution has reached one of the most remote places on Earth: the Arctic. That is according to two separate studies released last week which found tiny plastic particles, known as microplastics, in Arctic snowfall and frozen within the sea ice.
The Amazon rainforest generates one-fifth of the world’s oxygen but massive swathes of the forest are currently on fire, prompting major international alarm.